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Presidential campaign season is here, which means the mainstream media will begin actively campaigning for the Democrats, as usual. One of the ways the media does this is by asking Democratic candidates policy questions on current issues, and then turning around and playing Trivial Pursuit with Republican candidates, asking them history and science questions in the hope they will give a wrong answer. The purpose of this media game of GOP Jeopardy is to make Republican candidates look stupid. In the case of Michelle Bachmann (R-WI), it looks like it will work. Here's Bachmann being interviewed by ABC's George Stephanopoulos:

Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton was asked recently about House Majority Leader John Boehner's critique of the Obama admnistration's continued pursual of war in Libya without congressional approval. Oops. I apologize. The Obamans say the Libyan war isn't a war. I should have referred to it as the Libyan hostilities. Oops again. The Obamans say the Libyan hostilities aren't hostilities either. Well, regardless of what we're doing over there, and I'm pretty sure it involves bombs (have the Obamans renamed bombs yet ? Maybe they'll start calling them "man-made kinetic community organizers"), Hillary had this to say about Boehner's opposition to the way Obama has conducted the Libyan...um...time-limited, scope-limited, non-hostilities level, NATO-approved non-war in support of democr....aw, screw it. Here's what Hillary said:

The problem with politics is politicians...or is it the other way around ? Whatever it is, it prevents people from thinking clearly. To see politics at work, you don't have to look any further than our muddled, bureaucratic nightmare of a tax code. The last I heard, it was about 67,000 pages long, and it is filled with all sorts of arcane rules, tax credits, exemptions, etc. It seems politicians have been talking forever about making the tax code simpler, but it only gets bigger and more complicated every year.

Much political debate centers around marginal tax rates. How much the wealthy should pay is the hot topic these days, but I'd like to present a different angle on taxes. I propose that we get rid of ALL tax credits and exemptions, and replace it with a flat income tax rate. Obviously, I didn't think of this idea. It has been proposed before, but the more I think about it, the more I like it. Here's why.

Voter ID laws require a voter to show identification in order to cast a ballot. They are either under consideration or being passed in at least 23 states. Wisconsin and Texas are two states that recently passed such laws. Voter ID laws are designed to reduce election fraud. Sounds like a good, common sense idea to me. We all have the right to vote, but we don't have the right to vote fraudulently. Who hasn't heard the stories about Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck casting votes in our elections ? We dont want people voting multiple times, and we don't want people voting who are in this country illegally. It seems every election these days is accompanied by accusations of fraud from one side or the other. Voter ID seems like a good way to reduce that. Every adult in this country has identification, I would think. If they don't, they should. I'm asked for ID at the bank, the grocery store, the Bureau Of Motor Vehicles, and other places, so I don't have any problem showing my driver's license at the polls to insure I am who I say I am when voting. We want our elections to be honest.

Here's the curious thing about Voter ID laws - ALL of the states considering or implementing Voter ID are run by Republicans. Every single one. No Democrat-led state wants these laws, which begs the question...why don't Democrats want honest elections ?

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has conducted a study to determine which states are the least and most free. Predictably, those two bastions of liberaldom, New York and California, are the least free:

In order to deflect the fact that he has not complied with the War Powers Act or the Constitution by unilaterally going to war in Libya without the authorization of Congress, President Obama has chosen an interesting tactic - he is denying the existence of the war:

Last night, CNN hosted a GOP primary debate in New Hampshire (rush CNN transcript here). The Republican presidential contenders were Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain. After watching this debate, I'll say this right up front - I'd vote for any of them over Barack Obama in 2012 (though I'm not much of a Santorum fan). While I don't agree with these Republicans on everything, their views on the economy, jobs, and debt put them far ahead of Obama in my eyes, and those are the issues that matter most in this election cycle, along with America's foreign policy (three wars, along with bombings in Pakistan and Yemen. We've been at war in the Middle East for nearly a decade. Enough is enough already. Time for a big policy change there).

The candidates covered a number of topics, and I'm going to highlight some of Q&A I thought was notable. One of the disadvantages of these types of debates is, the candidates only have one minute to answer a question, and followup comments by other candidates to the same question are limited to thirty seconds. It's almost impossible for the candidates to provide detailed policy answers in such a short time frame. The CNN narrator, John King, was constantly interrupting the candidates and trying to cut them short due to time considerations, which was irritating.

A few years ago, then Senator Obama said electricity rates would "necessarily skyrocket" if his energy policies were implemented. In spite of this, for some odd reason, we decided to elect him President. Not our wisest move, America, because here comes the skyrocket:

When the federal deficit was reported as $1.5 trillion last year, that was real bad news. This year's $1.6 trillion deficit is also real bad.

But the truth is far worse. That $1.5 trillion figure consisted of what the government spent in excess of the revenue it took in, but it does not include any new unpaid liabilities the government accrued during the year. According to a USA Today analysis, the amount of new liabilities the government accumulated in 2010 is staggering:

I shamelessly stole the above headline from commenter 2012, because it's too perfect not to use. No way could I come up with a better one. Thanks, 2012 !

The State Of The Nation: Unemployment just rose to 9.1%. Economic growth is anemic. Half the feeble number of jobs created last month came from McDonald's fast food restaurants (I wonder how Oz-bama is going to take credit for that ?). We're in debt up to our eyeballs. Housing prices are continuing downward. Gasoline is expensive. Health care costs are exploding. Commodity prices are rising. Congressional Democrats haven't produced a budget in over two years. We're involved in three wars in the Middle East. We're on an unsustainable fiscal path.....so many big problems in this country...

A lawless group of thugs known as Orlando Food Not Bombs has been on a crime spree, but the police finally caught up to these scofflaw marauders, arresting three of them on wednesday. Their crime ? Brace yourself, and send the kids out of the room. This ain't pretty. The Orlando Food Not Bombs group was busted for (shiver)...illegally feeding homeless people in a park. Oh, the horror ! The Orlando Sentinel has the details:

I was reading a New York Times article about how Chrysler was repaying it's bailout loans six years early. This prompted the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to praise the Great And Powerful President Oz-bama for saving the Chrysler car company against the wishes of the evil Republican flying monkeys. Presumably, the flying monkeys wanted to kill Chrysler so they could laugh maniacally from atop their piles of ill-gotten gold at all the misery and pain they were able to inflict on Americans, because that's just the way evil Republican flying monkeys roll. They get off on inflicting pain and suffering, because, you know, they're E-V-I-L, along the lines of Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies.